Lots of input

Okay, so now I have a little mp3 player, I'm maxing on the podcasts/sermons/downloads while travelling to and from work. I'm absolutely loving it and feel like I'm learning lots. There are just so many resources out there, so I am focussing on where I feel weakest (godly manhood, marriage, parenting) or most intrigued (calling, serving God in the workplace) and I am finding that I am feeling very close to God. I'm not suddenly, magically more virtuous than before, but I am more focussed on God, more oriented towards him.
What I am trying to do though is ensure that I do not use up all of my time listening to mp3's and forget to actually spend time with God. Listening to CJ Mahaney talk about gospel-centric parenting is informative and instructive, but listening to God must be at the centre of who I am and how my time is spent. God deserves my very best, the first-fruits of all I have in time, energy, money and resources. It's not good enough for me to check in with God for five minutes as I go off to sleep, to fit him around the ironing and DVD watching. He needs to come first.
PJ Smyth spoke on manhood at New Frontiers in Brighton and quoted John Piper, who said that a man's place in the morning is rising early and spending time before God on behalf of his family and to seek God for direction and strength for himself. That sounds awesome. I tried it for the first time this morning and although I was pretty groggy and felt conflicted about not wanting to seem self-righteous (ooh, look what I do in the morning, aren't I good), it was a good few minutes of focussing on God, presenting my family to him in prayer and getting my day off to a good start.
Lord, help me to spend my time on the right things, to put you at the centre of every day and to make time for all that you would have me do, even if it is to the seeming detriment of things that I, in my own wisdom might mistakenly think are important.

Priorities

I listened to a podcast recently about priorities and what I might make time for. The suggestion was that if you are (as I am) a husband, father and worker who is involved in church ministry in some capacity, then those are pretty much the only things you are realistically going have time to do well. Initially I kind of bristled at the suggestion, because there are lots of other things I do and enjoy and I want to make sure I find room for them too. In the end, I decided to write down all of the things that are some sort of priority for me. They were in no particular order - I just wrote them down as they came to me and then I sat back and looked:-
Quality time with my wife
Special time with my children
Jogging / Exercise
Work
Preaching / Teaching
Creative writing / reading books and magazines / study
Work on proposal and content for film & theology ministry
Accountability / Mentoring / Discipleship relationships
Housework
Cinema/Films/TV
Church & House Group
Leading youth work
Holidays & rest days
Time with God - Bible/Prayer/Worship/Listening/Reflecting

That is at least 14 things, more if you count all of the "slashes". I think I need to be realistic about my ability to do all of these things well enough. The question then becomes what stays and what goes. Work, time with God, time with family, church, house group, ministry - these are non-negotiable. Exercise and holidays are necessary, essential even. Without a creative outlet, I'm likely to become very frustrated and irritable. If the housework does not get done, we start to find ourselves living in squalor. You see, herein lies the predicament. I just do not have time for everything on that list, but I justify and rationalise so much of it. What I really need to do is bite the bullet and cut some stuff out, make some difficult choices. That is hard. The alternative is to either burn out or do a dozen things in a mediocre fashion rather than a handful excellently.
When talking of reverse engineering our lives, Mark Driscoll says to project yourself forward 10 years, imagine what your life will look like then, how you want it to look then and decide now what you are going to do, how you are going to change your life so that in 10 years time you are there.
In 10 years' time my kids will be 19, 16 and 13. Do I want them to say to me, of me that I kept a lot of plates spinning and that it was intriguing watching me trying to keep that up? Do I instead want to see them close to God, excited about their relationships with him, pursuing his plans for their lives and saying of me that I always made time for them and never let anything other than God or their mother come before them? Do I want to be frustrated with my relationship with God, knowing it is not what it could be because I refused to lay aside other things in the pursuit of knowing him? Do I want my ministry to have suffered, stagnated or suffocated because I did not devote enough time and energy to it? Will it feel important and worthwhile to have seen every single film I wanted to see, even if my wife is a stranger to me?
I need to confront myself with these difficult questions, because it is the only way to motivate myself towards difficult decisions. If I do not appreciate what is at stake, if I do not reflect on what might happen, I will never focus on how important it is to get my life in order now, before something starts to go horribly wrong.
Next time you see me or talk to me, ask me if I am sorting this out.

Peace, Joy and Grace

Many trite turns of phrase get trotted out by us Christian types. Where God guides, he provides. God won't bring anything my way today that he and I can't handle together. Let go, let God.
The funny thing is, that they are all not only true, but because they have become cliched they have lost some of their power in our minds.
Last night we met as a house/home group and we talked about God. We reflected on how vast and amazing and powerful he is and although we got bogged down in semantics and small ideas from time to time, we lifted our eyes and saw what a great, awesome God we serve. God guides us into and through the amazing plans, the spectacular adventures that he has for us and he meets our needs along the way. I don't think we can count on God to meet our every need if we are not walking in his will, but where we follow him, he meets us with all of the grace, patience, gifts, energy and perseverance we could possibly need. When I have known I am where God wants me to be, doing what he wants me to do, I have never lacked what I have needed. I can point to a zillion examples of me not getting what I wanted, but that is entirely a different thing.
God does not dump things on us that he cannot and does not equip us for. We rarely feel equipped, but then it is never sensible to rely on our own resources or deceive ourselves in thinking we can cope on our own. We need to remind ourselves and be reminded by God of our wholesale dependence on him. His grace is available for every trial and circumstance. I would concede that I have little experience of genuine hardship and so I do not want to appear simplistic, but I have met those who have experienced great hardship and they have joined with Paul in declaring, "His grace is sufficient". We can handle it, with God. Admittedly he brings considerably more to the table than we do, like a "bring a dish" dinner party, where he brings all of the food, drink, plates, glasses, cutlery, tables andd chairs and I bring a cocktail stick for a sausage. In reality all we can bring is our trust in God and our determination to continue in that. I guess even that is a gift from God, so maybe we just bring our admission of helplessness and weakness and throw ourselves on our great provider, who does not grow faint or weary, who does not stumble, who gives strength to the down-trodden and whose power and might none can fathom. We need to let go of our dependence on ourselves, let go of the illusion that we have it all under control, that we can cope, that we are up to the challenge. We need to remember our God and his indescribably great love and power and commitment to us. Let him take the reins, let him be in charge, let him pour out his grace and blessings, let him be the bringer of joy and peace and as "Footprints" says so eloquently, so powerfully, allow him to carry us.

Podcasts

I have had so much fun and felt so close to God recently, simply by using my journey to and from work to listen to podcats. Mostly, these are sermons or similar from various churches or conferences. I have been hearing about marriage, parenting, leading my family, Jesus' sacrifice in my place, God's justice and it has all been so uplifting.
There have been many, many times when I have felt convicted of my sin, my attitudes, thoughts and behaviour, but God is faithful, compassionate and for me and keeps forgiving me and blessing me. I find myself waking up in the morning and rather than feeling anxious (as I had been for a good few weeks and therefore unable to get back to sleep), I find my thoughts automatically turning to God. I find myself praying, worshipping, feeling a sense of peace and joy.
It is not as if I now effortlessly breeze through the day, without a care or concern in the world. Loving my wife, raising my children, doing my job and carrying out my ministry in the church are still not easy and I still fail in these every day. But I feel hopeful. I feel that God is with me, that I am growing and that I am connecting with God. Listening to podcats is no substitute for time with God and I have to be disciplined in continuing to carve time out to be quiet, to pray, to meditate and listen, rather than just adding to my head knowledge, but I am doing well. God is with me, he loves me deeply and enduringly and he will walk with me every step of the way.

A Brave New World

Okay, time to up my game. I read a lot of ready good blogs and then some thoroughly pointless and vain ones. I do not want my blog to be a big, loud "look at me, aren't I funny". I want it to mean something. It might be about me at times, but hopefully in a way that is helpful, encouraging and thought-provoking for others. Hopefully, it may even make you smile from time to time, but not in a way intended to make myself look good, or (even worse) make others look bad. I want to add a useful meaningful voice to the blogosphere. Let's see how I get on.
The future starts here....

A godly husband

I was listening to a sermon from Mars Hill's Men's Conference on Men & Marriage. The speaker said that when he was a little younger his wife was diagnosed with cancer. At the time, one of his children, a son, was 20 years old and said to him, "Dad, if mum doesn't make it through this, you could go one of two ways. You could press on in with God, trust Him and follow Him through this, or you could lose it, turn your back on God and have nothing further to do with Him. I feel like you are 50/50 at the moment and could go either way. I need more from you than that. I need to know that you are going to be okay, no matter what happens".
Aside from wondering what kind of pair of brass balls that kid must have had to speak so candidly to his father, I now wonder how I would contend with such a desparate situation. I know of a man, who I cannot claim to be close friends with, whose wife is now losing her battle with cancel. She may pass away any day and his blog is tracking their experiences as she prepares to go to be with Jesus. His most recent post ends with "I intend to escort this woman of God to the gates of glory, as best as I am able". That's how a man of God conducts himself. I am utterly in awe at his courage, faith, strength and godliness and can only pray that should I find myself walking the same path I might have a fraction of such character.
God bless you Craig Mackay.

Avatar

I think that is important to dig as deep as is warranted into the books we read, the films we watch, the music we listen to and so forth. Some of what is out there may not ultimately prove to have much artistic merit or subtextual content, however we should think critically about these things as far as possible.
There is a place for realtively mindless diversion, as we all need to switch off from time to time and simply be entertained. Watching Con Air may fall under this heading. However, focussing on films for the moment, they all present value systems and world views that we need to evaluate. It may be something like a political bias, or a negative view of a certain gender or race. It may be objectifying women, championing infidelity or undermining Biblical truth. We may filter what we watch to a sufficient degree to ensure that these values do not infiltrate our own thinking or mindset, but we must take the time to weigh these things up. What do I consider to be the message of that film? What was it trying to say? How might it influence my own thoughts or conduct?
I watched Avatar last night (I know, everyone else has already seen it at least a couple of times) and it has given me a great deal to think about. It would be easy to dismiss it as a load of trippy-hippy tree hugging nonsense with 45 minutes of bombastic fighting at the end, but in fact that is a superficial and inaccurate assessment in both respects.
The idea of a deity dwelling in creation and connecting all living things is hardly novel and I do not think James Cameron would try to suggest that it is. The respect for nature that the Na'vi demonstrate and their sense of connectedness with creation could be swatted aside as paganism, however I think that without wanting to endorse a pantheistic doctrine, there is much to be considered about our own approach to creation. Do we think of it as a possession to be taken, used and discarded at our whim? Are we stewarding the creation that God has made for us and with which he has entrusted us? We must not worship creation, however we must look after it and use it responsibly. This should have an impact on our views on intensive farming methods, strip-mining, forest conservation, short term profit making enterprises at the expense of sustainability. We share this earth with all that God has made and although he placed us in charge of it, it is no more appropriate for me to misuse that authority than it would be for me to be a domineering husband or an abusive father.
The Na'vi say that they are born twice. Once bodily and then again into the Na'vi people. How similar to our own belief that we must be born again. We are born in the flesh at birth and then when we are called by God and saved we are born again by the spirit into the family of God. In the same way as Jake was able to say that he was now one of the Na'vi and referred to the other Na'vi as his brothers and sisters, so too do we enter into the family of Christ, becoming brothers and sisters with all of those who have likewise been saved by the grace of God. God gives us the spirit of sonship and by the Spirit we cry "Father!"
Jake found it an increasing wrench to return to his own body and felt increasingly more at home as a Na'vi. Although we do not "return" to our former state after we have been saved, our new life in Christ and by the Holy Spirit so quickly becomes so natural and so familiar that our former life apart from God increasingly feels like a bad dream from which we have awoken and all we want to do is remain as we are, with God forever. Which is precisely what He has planned for us.
I could carry on about Iraq allegories, unobtanium vs oil, Dances with Wolves or Pocahontas remakes and the age old imperialist lie of bringing civilisation to the savages, while actually exploiting or persecuting them for commercial gain. These themes are addressed in detail on all manner of secular websites and blogs, so I felt it more constructive to look from the angle I have as a different approach for those interested in such things.